See Ya Round, SOLDIER
by glow-stick-rave
Summary: Everything lately in Zack's life has been pretty ugly. This town, the stuff he has to do, everything. But then he meets a certain blind kid, who's got a lot to say about how beautiful the world really is.


**A/N- First Final Fantasy story ever, so I'm pretty nervous/nauseous/excited! Woot!**

**Disclaimer- Cloud? Not mine? Zack? Not mine. The whole franchise? Again, not mine. Bath and Body Works isn't mine either. Sorry. But I AM writin' about this stuff. For reals. **

'Fan-fucking-tastic.'

_You screwed the pooch on this one, Zacky._

'God damn.'

_Shit. Shit. SHIT. SHIIIIIIIIIIITTTT._

'Fucking hell!'

And yet, none of the curse words that Zack could pull out of his vocabulary made his car start working, and the engine stop fuming, and the smoke stop pouring out of the...he wasn't even sure quite where it was coming from. It was just there, swirling around and filling his lungs, and Zack became suddenly aware that sitting in a smoking car could be somewhat of a safety hazard to himself.

He stepped out. And cursed about 7 more times.

He should have complained more when Sephiroth told him to go into town and deliver the status reports and paper work to the Inn. He should have spoken up when he noticed that the car the Major Ballard wanted him to drive was a complete piece of shit. He should have pulled over about 2 miles ago when the car started smoking in the first place.

'Damn.'

Zack let his eyes wander from the car to the surrounding landscape. Gaia, he just had to break down half way between the base and the town, in the middle of nowhere. On a dusty old one-way road. By himself. Did he mention that he was in the middle of _nowhere?_

It was cold, the winter just starting to pulse through the veins of the mountains, the gray chill already weaving its way through all the valleys and all the cracks in the great rocks. Every breath he took reminded him that he was high-up, and oxygen was about as real as unicorns and faeries, and every second that passed by, reminded him that he didn't have any way to dig himself out of this one.

Calling Sephiroth wasn't an option. Zack was out here to prove himself to the general. Show him that, hey, this kid can be serious and professional and military-like, and not end up crying to his higher-ups an hour into an assignment because his fucking car wouldn't work.

No, he'd have to walk from here. Get to town and finish the assignment, then come back and plead with the General about how late he was, because the time it would take to walk there and back was like the time it would take for Sephiroth to come up with a scientific explanation for the creation of the Barney Show. So impossibly long, that you might as well grow old and die before ever hoping to see its completion.

Zack spat at the car's tire, hoping desperately that perhaps this would offend the car into submission, but it still remained in a smoking heap, and he cursed again, turning away from it and starting down the gray road that would hopefully take him to civilization.

That's when, a small voice behind him said,

'Sounds like you're pretty screwed.'

He nearly shat himself he was so scared. He whirled around with such speed that one ankle twisted over the other and he fell to the ground, only after having unleashed the most unmanly scream any SOLDIER had ever been able to produce. It was so high-pitched, dogs probably would have started barking _were he anywhere near civil-fucking-ization._

About 20 feet away, was a boy.

Yes, a boy. Not a mountain lion. Not an alien. Not Sephiroth. A boy.

But a strangely stunning boy.

What he was wearing was plain, and strangely reminded Zack of what back-water mountain children wore in his mind. Well...minus the whole 'coon cap and fur coat thing. The boy was wearing thick gray pants, with muddied brown boots, and stained dark green jacket and, to top it all off, a fuzzy red scarf. He was thin, with sharp pale features, and two misty blue eyes that stared, not at Zack, but at a point somewhere beyond him. His hair was a soft golden, and it grew from his head in ways that Zack could not have imagined, thick clumps of gold tapered off into thin spikes.

The boy kind of shone, his pale features stark even through the dimmed sun, and his round face reminded Zack immediately of his childhood.

He opened his mouth, trying to think of something meaningful to say to such a creature, something that would bring a smile to faintly downturned lips. But of course, Zack forever proving himself to be the typical lug-head SOLDIER, merely said with unintended malice,

'Who the fuck are you?'

The boy seemed unfazed by this, and he took a few tentative steps forward, eyes still locked on something in the distance. Zack spun around to see if perhaps a giant creature was lurking behind him, but when his eyes met only trees, he turned back.

'Your car is completely trashed.' The boy said, eyes not once looking to him. 'That's going to take quite a bit of gil to repair. You know that right?'

'I think I could guess from the way its smoking.' Zack said, wariness disappearing as he found himself falling into the same old routine he pulled with all new people he met. Crack a joke, get them laughing, introduce yourself, make a friend, promise a meeting, leave, never see them again.

'What's your name?' The boy asked before Zack could get started on the old, 'This once happened to my Uncle Jimmy' joke going. 'And where are you headed?'

'The name's Zack. SOLDIER 1st Class.'

'The base is that way.' The boy said, pointing behind him.

'I _know that._' Zack said, inwardly disturbed at how awfully close the comment came to sounding like a whine.

'Then are ya headed into town?'

'I _was._'

There was a moment of awkward silence, where Zack stared at the boy, and the boy didn't stare back, and car continued fuming off on its spot beside the road.

Suddenly the boy started forward again, extending his hand warily, as if in greeting.

'I'm Cloud.' He said.

The first thing that Zack noticed was the Cloud's hand had missed him by about 2 feet, and was pointing off towards a random clump of trees. Assuming that Cloud was not trying to introduce himself to the wilderness, Zack stepped quickly to the side and took the boy's pale fingers into his own.

'Good to meet ya.'

It became apparent at this point the boy was blind. The glossy look in his eyes, the way his pupils were muddied with haze. The expression on his face that told him he was trying to focus on what his ears could pick up.

Unlike most people though, Zack didn't ask. He didn't wave his hand in front of his face, nor did he make some sort of attempt to test the kid's blindness. Instead, he gently probed for words that would make this whole awkward situation disappear, and the first thing his mind landed on was what left his mouth.

'I'm so—'

'Don't apologize.' The blonde kid snapped. There was a moment where he looked almost angry, but that was quickly replaced with some form of amusement. 'Do you apologize to trees because they can't book a vacation for themselves and their families? You don't, because trees can't possibly dial a phone-number for a travel agent, nor can they speak at all, let alone create words coherent enough to get them a flight to Costa del Sol. Don't apologize to me because, as far as I'm concerned, _what the hell am I missing?_'

The comment was made so flippantly that it nearly hit Zack like a sack of bricks. He paused for a moment, but the boy had already let go of his hand and was walking away, a white and red stick extended before him in an effort to keep himself from tripping over the random rocks that occasionally jutted out from the road.

Zack whirled around, and took several long strides to catch up.

'What are you doing, out here by yourself?'

'I walk this way to get groceries.'

'Like food and shit?'

Cloud ignored this. 'For my mother. We live near the base. It was where my father used to work, but now that the old man's gone, it's up to me to make the trips to town for supplies. The only thing resembling a shop is the convenience store, about half a mile away from the base.'

Zack nodded, but then remembered that having a conversation with Cloud was going to be somewhat like having a conversation on the phone. He had to remember not to get too weird and silent or else he'd freak the kid out.

'Right.' Was all he could come up with.

Pale lips turned upwards again. 'You talk a lot less than I thought you would.'

Zack stopped. 'The hell's that supposed to mean?'

Cloud stopped too, and swung around, still smiling. 'You sound confident. Kinda cocky given the correct situation. But you can't really showcase your good-looks or talent to a blind kid. So I thought maybe you'd try to talk about it.'

'How on earth can you tell I'm good looking?'

Cloud raised an eyebrow and Zack scratched the back of his neck.

'I wasn't saying I _was _good looking just...'

'Right.' Cloud said, swinging back around. 'C'mon. At this rate we'll be old men by the time we get there.'

They walked in a not entirely uncomfortable silence, Zack stepping over rocks that came into his path and Cloud weaving between them as soon as his stick encountered anything that wasn't flat.

As the day progressed, so did the depth of their conversations. Zack learned Cloud hadn't always been blind. It had been his dream to be a SOLDIER, big-ass sword and all, but an accident involving chemicals had rendered him completely sightless. He went into town once a week following the public road.

'Don't you think you'll get hit by a car?' Zack asked.

'I wasn't hit by _you_ was I?'

Zack suddenly recalled seeing something scamper off to the side of the road as soon as he had come around a bend in the road.

_Point taken._

'So...' Zack said in an effort to throw off the awkward silence that followed the comment. 'Gotchyerselfagirl?'

Even Cloud, who probably had some sort of spidey-hearing or whatever the fuck you wanted call it, couldn't understand the jumble of words that left Zack's mouth. The boy furrowed his brow and tried to piece together the vomit of sounds, and finally decided that Zack had said 'God, I'm gonna hurl.' And decisively put about 10 feet of distance between them, just in case Zack was a rocket-launcher when it came to barfing.

Zack, on the other hand, took this as some sort of offense to his comment, and shyly lowered his head.

_What the fuck? I'm not fucking _shy_! I'm Zack Fair, I'm macho! I'm awesome! What the hell? Sephiroth's pretty little silver-head can't hold a candle to manliness of this magnitude! I mean, look at his hair! It must take a shit-load of mousse to get his bands to do that...flippy thing. Unless of course he's using that new Extrisse Devoux stuff, the coconut scent is a bit gaudy but it sure does the—_

Zack stopped the train of thought right there for fear of setting fire to the closet he was currently hiding in.

Sephiroth had spent nearly a year chastising him for keeping his not-so-much-a-secret-anymore-but-for-the-sake-of-stuff-faced-pride-let's-pretend-it-is-anyway secret from everyone. (It's not like they didn't already know, but that wasn't the point.)

Sephiroth told him that there was little to no point in keeping his, Zack shuddered at the use of the word, _sexuality _a secret. Zack hated it when Sephiroth used the word _sexuality _around him. It made him sound like a flower that grew and bloomed upside-down. He liked boys. Big deal. _Sexuality_ seemed to him a process. A long string of wondering, thinking, grasping, trying, realizing, admitting and embracing. In all honesty, Zack woke up one morning and knew what he wanted.

And what he wanted was a man.

End of story.

No epilogue.

No afterward.

Zack Fair wanted a man, and by god, he was going to get one, one day. But for the time being, he had to deal with knowing that the moment he 'came out' everyone was going to think of his _sexuality_ as a process, the last thing he wanted was for everyone to look at him like a flower that bloomed upside-down.

So he told no one but Sephiroth, who was too socially inept to grasp the whole _sexuality_ meaning other than the dictionary definition. And after he'd kept it for so long, he knew that if he came out and told everyone now that they'd just think that his hiding was part of 'the process.'

So secrecy, he kept.

Cloud had by now figured out that Zack was indeed not going to hurl all over him, and had drifted back towards the sound of crunching feet on the gravel. They're shoulders almost brushed, _almost,_ before suddenly the slow rumblings of a truck arose somewhere in the darkness behind him, and Cloud stopped for half a second before making his way to the side of the road, Zack, who was still ranting about all the different things that were wrong with the world, following without question.

'The town is just up ahead.' Cloud informed him as another car passed. 'The traffic picks up on the outskirts.'

Zack nodded turned his head to look through the rocky brush to see the mountains were starting to open up, and the beginnings of a cluster of buildings were just up the bend. After all hazardous traffic had passed, Cloud stepped back onto the road, one slender hand outstretched with the stick, while the other was held delicately at one side.

The town of Nibelheim was small, and relatively speaking, drunk. Even in the early day-light hours bars and god-forbid the corner _saloons _were open for business and the towns-people could only be found wandering in between bouts of drinking and work shifts, shouting and stumbling, and ranting and boiling all along the way.

Quaint little mountain village be damned. Nibelheim was some sort of Spaghetti Western/Blair Witch Project _rave._

'I could live here.' Zack found himself mumbling.

A sound escaped Cloud that sounded suspiciously like a snort, and Zack looked over at the boy, who continued to hum the tune to a song easily recognized as the number one hit in Midgar.

Ooh. A city-boy wanna-be?

Strangely, Cloud seemed to sense the way in which Zack stared, and he turned his head away, the blood rushing to rest just below the skin of his pale cheeks. Zack watched with a cheeky smile as the boy turned away, but the smile disappeared as soon as the boy turned back again, sporting a smile that hit him right where it hurt.

Zack couldn't breathe.

Cloud had looked solemn on the way down, the only smiles he allowed had been gentle upturns in his pale lips, but now, he let loose a grin that lit the entirety of his face, all the way up to his blank eyes, which seemed filled with a joy that Zack couldn't name.

'So, SOLDIER. What's in your big game plan _now_?'

Was that a purr? Zack stared, blinked, and then thought. He thought _hard._ The boy was beautiful. That he couldn't deny. But the boy was shy, and strange in a way that he couldn't place. Strange in the way he swung his hips when he walked, in the way he hummed incessantly a number of tunes all jumbled together at once, in the way he had seemed so closed off until now, when he let loose the most gorgeous grin ever, and the way in which he spoke those words.

It was all kind of...

_Sexy._

'I don't know. I have to deliver a package to the Inn keeper, and then...'

'Hike your sorry ass back up to the base?'

'Yeah.' Zack ducked his head, suddenly weighted by the grin Cloud was sporting. It was lovely in a way that his pride wouldn't let him admit, but _geez _this kid had come out of nowhere and swept him away too quickly for him to see where he was going. He needed a few moments where his mind wasn't clouded by the boy and _think. _What was going on here?

'Hey.' Cloud said, reaching out slightly, but his hand stopped and retracted back into the depths of his pockets. 'You don't have to walk.'

The softness of his voice shocked Zack out of his own world, and Zack's sought out his eyes, even if he knew he couldn't see anything back.

'You're not telling me _you_ have a car do you?' Zack said, trying to humour that grin back into existence. It returned, but it wasn't nearly as strong, and Cloud instead snorted, shaking his head at the joke.

'Way to make fun of the blind kid man.'

'SOLDIERS are ruthless.'

'I can tell.'

There was that purr again. A deep growl that told Zack the whole shy thing was a facade. Who was Cloud really besides a mountain kid?

Zack had the feeling that, if the child had found himself at Shinra, he would have been a terrible flirt, and terribly _his._

'C'mon.' He said. 'Meet me back here in an hour. Go get your stuff done and I'll...come get you.' What was this?

Cloud was taking a step closer.

And the end of his walking-stick collided with Zack's shoe.

And another step.

And breath was ghosting across his chin.

'Zack.'

The name fell off of pale lips and ghosted onto dry red ones. And Zack struggled for a moment with the urge to lean forward, tilt his head to the side...

He took a step back, leaning as far away as his spine would let him, uttered a quick 'See ya' and left, working his way as quickly as possible to the inn, package in hand.

* * *

Buses were uncomfortable. Buses were harsh. Buses were fucking annoying.

And Zack was about to kill the couple of teenage douchebags who thought it would be funny to join in on the spirit of bus-riding and sing in obnoxiously drunk voices 'The Wheels On the Bus' in a plethora of keys.

'The money on the bus goes clink, clink, clink'

Zack was tempted to stick his fingers in his ears, or say something that he might possibly regret later. Trying to block out the horrible noise of drunken sing-a-long time, Zack let his eyes wander, studying the people who sat around him, namely the little fussing baby, who sat perched on the lap of an obvious over-worked, under-paid, and 6 feet away from an early grave woman. She glared at him over baggy eyelids and then let them droop as she took a long drag from a cigarette.

The only thing that could possibly make this any worse was the fact that there was a certain blonde male sitting next to him, who was currently jamming out to some semblance of music through a pair of fragile looking dinosaur ear-phones. Cloud had kept his word, and had picked him up as soon as he was finished, then he'd taken Zack to the bus-station, where he informed him that a bus ran up to the base around dinner time and they could go back up together.

'It only happens twice a day.' He said. 'And normally I much prefer walking. But seeing as I have a mountain fragile SOLDIER with me...'

Zack scowled at that.

'I'll have to make adjustments.'

Zack, throughout the whole entirety of the ride had been trying his best not to look at the boy. He found that when he stared, even the drunken singing faded to nothing but seeing as his SOLDIER pride was big and _stupid_ he had to be content with drowning in the hustle and bustle of the shit-filthy drunk-infested bus.

'The baby on the bus goes wah, wah, wah'

Zack snuck a peak at Cloud, who had his head leaned against the window, blue eyes shut. To anyone else, he would look to be asleep, but Zack knew better. Glancing downwards, and straining not to let his eyes wander inappropriately, he could see the pads of Cloud's fingers, drumming along the beat of the song against his walking-stick, which was rested against one knee. It actually would have been a lovely picture, had the drunks not decided to up the volume a bit, as if to ensure that _every single molecule_ on the bus got a good dose of pre-school entertainment. Finally, a small little twig nestled in Zack's brain snapped.

'The people on the bus say—'

'Shut the FUCK up!!!!'

Cloud jumped to attention at the sound, the drunks stopped singing, and 40 individual eyeballs swivelled this way and that until they landed at the fuming young man at the front of the bus. He stood with flared nostrils, eyes shining with anger and a thick hand pointed accusingly at the offending singers.

'Seriously. This isn't Playhouse Disney! Give us a fucking break and go be hammered somewhere else!'

A slender hand touched his elbow.

'Zack.'

Cloud's drowsy voice, and the sensation of Cloud's hand yanked him off the edge of the deep rant he was about to plunge into and threw him on his ass, effectively shielding him from the eyes of the shocked bus-riders. Zack turned to gaze at Cloud who seemed shaken out of his rest, and was holding out the earphones to him.

'I want you to listen to something.'

Zack glanced down at the earphones, then back up at Cloud, who was facing in his direction, even though his eyes rested somewhere behind him.

He took them, and put them over her head, flattening down his wild black-spike somewhat. The song that was playing was one Zack didn't recognize, sung by an obvious older woman with a whole lot of acoustic guitars and wind-chimes and shit, singing about old times, and vines and flowers and meadows.

It wasn't especially impressive. When it was over, he removed the headphones and shrugged, racking his brain for an appropriate 'kinda sucked, kinda didn't' response.

What if this was Cloud's favourite song or something? He didn't want to offend him.

'U-um. It's...it's _okay._' Zack prayed to every religious figure in existence that Cloud wouldn't burst into tears or make a big deal about his musical preferences being trashed.

But what Cloud said next surprised him.

'Total shit right?'

'What?' Zack asked.

'Total nonsense. Flowers and bees and crap. It makes me feel like I'm in some sort of Bath and Body Works acid trip.'

'Oh.' Zack said, raising an eyebrow. 'Why the hell did you have me listen to it then?'

'Just testing you.' Cloud said simply, wrapping up his CD player and putting it into his bag.

'Testing me?'

'To make sure you weren't some sort of closet easy-listening music lover.'

Zack flinched at the word 'closet.'

'Oookay. Did I pass?'

'I give you a B, for trying to be polite about it. I'm a punk-rock kinda kid.'

'Oh.' Zack replied with a laugh. 'You like it raw.'

_I did _not_ just say that._

Cloud pretended not to hear it.

'But I'll sing anything. That's the downside to spending all your time just _hearing_ things. Hey, are you hungry?' Cloud said instead, just as the bus was pulling up to the base.

'What?'

'I won't have you going back to some big scary military place on an empty stomach. We'll make a stop at the convenience store. You should have gotten some real food in town.'

'Oh, that's okay. I'm not—'

'Bullshit.' Cloud replied. 'It's almost 6, I found you wandering in the wilderness at like...noon. You've _got _to be starving.'

Zack didn't object, but followed Cloud out into the opening, where they followed a cement path to what looked like a shady sort of liquor store, but upon closer inspection came to sell more than just vodka.

Zack was starting to think every store sold something alcoholic in this town.

Cloud entered slowly, leaving the door open for Zack to pass him, and then let it shut behind him.

Behind the counter there sat a shady old mad tinkering on some sort of Geiger counter device that was beeping profusely. Beyond him were about 7 or 8 little eyes, each boasting bags of purely sugar and carb snack food. He snatched a granola bar from underneath the counter, and let his eyes rest on the boy for a while, who was busy asking the man where kept the chocolate.

He had to admit, he was saddened. His time with Cloud was almost over, and more likely than not, Zack wouldn't see him again. Sephiroth probably wouldn't ask him to come back to town, and even then, who said Cloud would go either. He didn't know where he lived. Cloud's was a face about to disappear forever.

Zack drank in the honey-blonde spikes, the pool blue eyes, and the pale smile, hoping to savour whatever feeling it gave him before it all vanished.

Cloud purchased a bar of chocolate and ate it, tapping his foot to some new song he was listening too with a faint smile on his face.

Zack stood by the counter dumbly, trying to decide whether he should be excited or worried he'd miss the boy so much when everyone else he met seemed to eagerly float straight out of his memories. Cloud threw away the candy wrapper, and turned to leave.

'I've got to go Zack. The base is just up the way. I'll...see ya later.' He started for the door.

He didn't know if he did it intentionally. He probably never would.

But as the boy, as _Cloud_, brushed past him, one pale hand stretched forward, be it to keep himself from running into something, or for some dark reason Zack didn't want to think of, and grazed the fabric over Zack's crotch, stooping down to his inner thigh, before curling outward to the waistband resting on his hip.

'Sweet _Jesus.'_ Zack breathed.

Electricity danced up along the path Cloud's index finger had travelled and suddenly every muscle in Zack's body tensed unbearably, making his knees want to suddenly buckle under the tension. A path like fire burned where Cloud's hand had left him, and spiked its way straight to his heart, which paused for the briefest of moments, before soaring up at a hundred miles an hour as Zack breathed out sharply,

If Cloud heard Zack's exclamation, he made no move to acknowledge it, as his continued on, the same hand that had assaulted him still poised in the hair. It connected with the bar running across the exit to the shop, and with one backwards wave, Cloud pushed his way out onto the street, and took off down the concrete sidewalk and out of sight.

Zack stood there for a few moments longer, trying to collect himself, force every muscle back into working order, and suppress his heart-rate to something remotely normal as he turned back to the counter. He sucked in a breath he didn't know he needed, and turned face the shop-keeper who sat on the stool with boredom etched into his sagging features.

'H-how much do I owe you?'

When had his throat gotten so dry?

'7 gil.' The shopkeeper said without so much as blinking. Zack nodded and quickly asked to add a bottle of water to his purchase and, after retrieving it from the back fridge and paying the 7 gil he owed, exited the shop, hands still trembling as he broke open the wrapper on the granola bar and lifted it to suddenly chapped lips.

What had happened back there?

He could remember the sensation of Cloud's hand ascending his leg before leaving him. The only feeling he could recall that had ever come close to this one was when he found himself at the receiving end of Reno's EMR, after a particularly heated encounter at a bar one evening. He remembered how the shock of fire and pain that raced up from his wrist, straight to his heart and his brain, enough to knock his world side-ways for a few moments as the electricity seized every function in his body and stalled it for a moment. The world had gone black, his heart had stopped, even his hearing had dipped out to where he could no longer hear the sound of his own gasping.

But this wasn't painful. This electricity that followed Cloud's pale fingertips was far from _pain._ It was like nothing Zack had ever felt before. All he knew was that the only pain he felt was the pain of the electricity leaving him, and the image of Cloud walking away from him burning into his eyes.

It left him with a dull ache that started up in his chest and worked its way through his muscles and ended in a head aching with nothing but confusion.

Zack was in all aspects, militaristic in his logic. Despite the frivolous way he went about acting, he enjoyed order and organization as much as the next military-hard head. Hell, you could even say he rivalled Sephiroth in his love of things that were _logical._

But _this. This was a fucking mess. _

The touch, the hand, the boy, the misty blue eyes, and the way those pale lips drew up whenever Zack said something even remotely humorous. It all made the man dissolve into a quivering mass of questions and possible answers, racing around in his head, trying to catch and latch on to one another. His emotions suddenly ran together like coloured water, making a sticky black mess that hollowed out the pit of his stomach and made his throat run dry with nausea.

Zack hated and loved the feeling, and he hated and loved that he felt this way about his feelings and he—

'Mother fucker.' He cursed, shaking his head back and forth to rid himself of any further thoughts. Never had he thought that he would heed Angeal's advice not to think too much (because generally, Angeal told him that he didn't think _enough.)_ And just leave it be. So Zack tried to cut off any thought that entered his mind other than '_It's getting late._' And let his boots carry him back to the base even though the rest of him seemed to be whirling about in all different directions, most of which leading straight back to Cloud.

When he reached the base, almost everyone was gone, retired for the evening after the day's activities. With cautious feet, Zack made his way to largest cabin farther up the hill, trying not to trip on his way up the weathered mountain path. He tip-toed his way across the porch and tried to step inside as quietly as possible. With any luck, Sephiroth was—

'Where on the _planet_ have you been?'

Zack froze.

He was halfway through closing the door behind him, fully aware that someone might as well have put a spot light on him and pulled the raging alarms because he was _busted. _Grimacing, Zack slowly swivelled around to face the General himself, who was seated stiffly on a kitchen chair, a mug filled with some unnameable brown liquid steaming on the counter next to his elbow. There was an evident scowl on his face and Sephiroth's green eyes were poised on his second-in-command's rigid form.

'I'm sorry Seph.' Zack said, clicking the door shut before removing his jacket and boots. 'I was held up in town.'

'You're 2 hours late.'

'My car broke down, and I had to take a bus.'

It wasn't a complete lie, Zack told himself. In fact, it was not completely unlike the truth, even if he did leave out being rescued and subsequently molested by a blind teenager.

Sephiroth's near sepulchral expression told Zack that he believed his story but was still pissed at the obvious lack of punctuality shown by his second-in-command.

_Geez. _Zack thought, studying Sephiroth's expression with a hidden amusement, _did anyone ever think to make a Sephiroth haunted house? That look would be sure to make someone scream. _

'You could have called. I'd think I'd like to know if you'd gotten yourself trapped out in this wilderness with no transportation.'

Zack was suddenly struck by the image of a teenager who had snuck out to go to some party and returned home late at night to find their mother sitting up, fuming about how irresponsible her child was.

That was connection Zack never thought he'd be making. Sephiroth and angry mothers.

It was strangely funny.

So funny in fact, that Zack tried to bite back a giggle, but was a fraction of a second too late, and Sephiroth's glare turned murderous.

'Aw come on Seph,' Zack reasoned. 'It wasn't completely my fault. I didn't ask for my car to break down the way it did.'

'I find you completely culpable.'

'Culpa-what?'

'Guilty.' The comment made Zack think of an alligator snapping its jaws shut.

'Now that's a little harsh don't ya think?'

Sephiroth didn't reply this time, and instead turned stiffly back to his unidentifiable brown liquid, taking two long sips that effectively emptied the mug. Zack knew with every fibre of his being that when Sephiroth stopped talking, _Sephiroth stopped talking,_ and any attempt at conversation beyond that point was useless.

He turned without a word down the hall to his bedroom, closing the door gently behind him. Stripping down to the usual boxers, plaid today, Zack started to clamber into bed when a movement made him stop.

This particular movement was in fact that act of reaching one leg up to his bed. Unlike most people, Zack tended to climb into bed feet first, as opposed to sitting and then swivelling around into a lying position. He had lifted his knees up, effectively exposing the flesh of his thigh, and when his eyes happened to find it, the event from earlier today flooded back into his mind.

Cloud's fingers had grazed here...

Gingerly, Zack traced the path Cloud's fingers had taken, trying to recreate the electricity he had felt earlier. Trying to feel again what he so desperately craved now that the feeling was gone. But no such sensation came, and after his fingers traced upwards to his hip, his hand dropped to his side and he climbed fully under the covers.

The last thought that floated up through the fog of his exhausted mind was one of Cloud, and Zack's grin-infected mouth was, for the first time in a long time, unsure whether to smile or frown.

.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

**An' there it is. Lovely ain't it?**

**Nah, jus' kiddin'! **

**Thanks for reading if you made it down here. Exams are this week and this story's really short, probably only one or two more chapters. I couldn't cram it all in here. *shudder* think of how long THAT would have taken hahaha!**

**If you have the heart and feel up to it**

**Please, my friends, come and review it!**

**Yeah. I seriously DID just make up a rhyme. Oooh snap!**


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